Saturday, May 8, 2010

Why grocery shopping doesn't have to be a pain in the ass


Grocery shopping can really suck. Especially if you're like me and tend to frequent Trader Joes and Whole Foods. I once asked a Whole Foods employee how he doesn't have a panic attack every time he comes to work. His response was, "Well, I just try to be mellow and calm...for the most part people are cool and will move out of my way when I need to get through...but there are a lot of douchebags."

Yes Whole Foods man...there certainly are a lot of douchebags at the grocery store. And on top of the classic douches there are screaming children, carts left in the middle of the aisles, old people who never hear you say excuse me, and the crowds. OH the crowds. Unfortunately, we need to eat and thus we need to grocery shop.

Personally, I am a weirdo and I love to grocery shop. I think it's because I learned at an early age to never go into a grocery store without a battle plan. In college I was a personal assistant for a family in Beverly Hills and I had to do all their grocery shopping as part of my job. A week's worth of groceries for a family of 5 (plus a  housekeeper). That's a lot of food, trust me. The woman I worked for was actually a pretty good cook and she planned out all her family's meals for the week. She would write everything out: "6 tomatoes, on the vine, highest quality available", "2 lbs premium ground beef, lowest fat content", "6 french cornish hens, ask the butcher to slice down the middle and package for you", "1 package fruit roll ups" (surely her son's request), "1 jar kosher dill spears, highest quality/most expensive". She would then give me an envelope full of hundreds and send me on my way. 

My first trip to the store was a disaster. It took me forever to get through the list in the time allotted...you see I only had 45 minutes to get through the store and drop off the groceries before picking her son up from soccer practice. I didn't know where to find anything in the store and I didn't know the difference between a shallot and a scallion. (Note: shallots = small brown onions, often sold in little net packages, and scallions = long green onions often sold in bunches) 

Over time, however, I learned how to navigate a big grocery store with ease. I learned how to pick the best veggies and how to order from the meat counter. I even made friends with the store manager who let me cut the lines! In the end, I learned to love grocery shopping...something I am forever grateful for. 

This brings me to my theory: grocery shopping doesn't have to suck, people just see grocery shopping as a real pain in the ass because they don't know what they are doing. 

Take it from an ex-professional grocery shopper: The first step to grocery shopping inner peace is to go in with a plan

Now I'm not saying that you need to plan out every meal you're going to make through the entire week, or write out the exact number of tomatoes you need per week, but having a few recipes in mind certainly doesn't hurt. More importantly, you should stop for a second and ask yourself which ingredients go together? For example..."Gee, I want to make that amazing Williams Sonoma shrimp dish that calls for feta cheese...I'll probably have some feta leftover so maybe I should pick up some tomatoes and cucumbers and throw together a Greek salad later in the week." This is critical when you're buying unusual ingredients or else you'll end up having a lot of food go to waste. That's not good for the earth (even if you compost) or for your wallet. So just take a moment to think before you go to the store. 

If you aren't shopping for multiple days then that's fine, just buy exactly what you need for for dinner that night...DO NOT...I repeat, DO NOT just starting picking food off the shelves at random as a way to buy a week's worth of food. You'll end up with a full refrigerator and I guarantee most will go to waste. 

In short: figure out what you want to cook, what you need, and then write a list. Write your list according to grocery store department. This way you aren't making laps around the store. You can see my example above. It's not pretty...but it got the job done. It's not the most complete list I ever made, it's not a week's worth of groceries, but I wanted to include a real list not something I drafted up for the blog.

Well, I hope this is helpful. This is also reminding me that I have some people coming over for dinner and I'm not sure what to cook....any ideas?